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Gluten-Free Glutton: More restaurants are adding gluten-free menu items -- including new pizza and hamburger eateries

When I walked to the door of Your Pie, a new pizza restaurant on Fleming Island, I knew I was in the right place.

The restaurant had a decal posted by the door with the letters “GF” in a circle. That means the staff has been trained and the restaurant is equipped to provide gluten-free meals for its customers.

I’ve seen the GF label on food products before, but this was the first time I’d seen it at a restaurant, let alone a restaurant in the Jacksonville area.

Yes, we are making progress in educating the public about celiac disease and the gluten-free diet.

May is Celiac Awareness Month, and this marks the third year that I’ve been doing my part to make the public aware. But I really do feel like the word is getting out.

In case you’re still wondering, celiac disease is a chronic ailment that causes damage to the small intestine when people with the condition ingest gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye and barley. The only treatment for the disease is a strict gluten-free diet.

Less than 1 percent of the U.S. population has celiac disease, but an estimated 6 percent has some other type of gluten intolerance that makes them sick when they eat gluten.

Despite the irritating endorsements of some celebrities (I’m talking to you, Gwyneth Paltrow), a gluten-free diet has no proven benefits for those of you without celiac or some other type of gluten intolerance.

It’s important that restaurants understand that. Customers who ask for gluten-free dishes have real concerns about getting sick if their meals aren’t prepared properly. Fortunately, more restaurants are aware.

Your Pie, a chain started in Athens, Ga., in 2008 is a good example. It offers pizzas on gluten-free crusts with a large variety of gluten-free toppings and sauces, and provides training to make sure the staff can produce a pizza that’s not contaminated with gluten. Some celiacs can get sick if they ingest the slightest amount of gluten.

Mike and Dea Sims, the Your Pie franchisors for the Jacksonville market, understand that. They took me into the kitchen of their first restaurant on Fleming Island to show me how it’s done.

The gluten-free crusts are stored in their own metal pans. When someone orders a gluten-free pizza, they take fresh ingredients out of the refrigerator that have not come into contact with other pizzas, and they make sure they use freshly cleaned utensils to prepare the pie.

Mike Sims said — and other restaurants that offer gluten-free pizzas have told me the same thing — that they can’t offer a 100 percent guarantee that dust from regular pizza dough flying around the restaurant won’t find a way to the gluten-free pizza by accident.

“That’s my biggest concern. There’s no way we can control that,” he said. But otherwise, Your Pie is doing everything it can to provide a gluten-free experience.

Sims expects to open a second Your Pie restaurant in the Tapestry Park area on Jacksonville’s Southside in July.

Your Pie isn’t the only new restaurant taking special care of the gluten-free crowd. Epik Burger, a new restaurant on Atlantic Boulevard at the intersection of Girvin Road, offers an impressive variety of gluten-free options.

The mother of owner Korey Konopasek has celiac, so he was well aware of the gluten-free diet. And Konopasek also serves as director of operations at Chartwells Dining at the University of North Florida, so he has learned how to serve students with a variety of food allergies. He wanted a restaurant that could accommodate everybody.

“It’s important to me that people are able to eat there whenever they want,” he said.

Epik Burger offers hamburgers, as well as chicken, veggie and tuna burgers, with the option of a gluten-free bun.

It has a separate toaster for the gluten-free buns, to make sure they are not contaminated by regular buns.

Epik Burger also has french fries and even onion rings that are all gluten free, whether you order them that way or not. It’s the only restaurant I know of in Northeast Florida with gluten-free onion rings.

Almost everything on the menu can be ordered gluten free, and the menu is clearly marked so you can make sure.

Alice Bast, founder and president of the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness, has noticed that more restaurants want to learn about gluten-free food safety. The NFCA has a training program to educate food service providers.

“We were out there trying to promote it” in past years, Bast said.

“Now we have calls coming in. That’s a change.”

For Celiac Awareness Month, the NFCA is starting a new program called “Fuel the Family,” to encourage relatives of celiacs to get themselves tested for the condition. Celiac is a genetic disease so if you have it, there’s a good chance that another family member has it.

You shouldn’t necessarily worry if one of your relatives has celiac, because not all family members will have it. But it is important to get tested, even if you don’t have any symptoms, like me. I know I’m not going to feel sick if I accidentally eat gluten, but I also know that eating gluten will cause long-term damage to my intestines, so I do everything I can to avoid it.

Bast said that an estimated 83 percent of people with celiac have not been diagnosed.

“The more of us that are diagnosed, we’re going to live longer and healthier,” she said.

There are other ongoing gluten-free issues to watch during Celiac Awareness Month. One is the continuing wait for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve standards for labeling products as gluten free.

The proposed standard is that food should be considered gluten free if it contains less than 20 parts per million of gluten. Although celiacs do everything they can to avoid even a trace of gluten, researchers have assured me that food is safe if it meets the 20 parts per million standard.

The FDA first took this on in 2005 and many celiacs are getting impatient waiting for final approval. The proposal was sent to the White House in February for final review.

The NFCA and other organizations are also pressing the FDA for a labeling standard on medications. Gluten in pills is as much a concern as gluten in food, but there currently is no labeling standard requiring drug makers to identify medications that may have gluten in them.

But I’m optimistic, and I look forward to telling you about more progress the next time Celiac Awareness Month rolls around.

Mark Basch’s column appears the second Thursday of the month. He also writes a blog about gluten-free eating in Jacksonville at jaxglutenfreeglutton.blogspot.com/. You can reach him at basch.mark@gmail.com.

Gluten-Free Glutton: More restaurants are adding gluten-free menu items -- including new pizza and hamburger eateries- By